Today in TV History: Sam Malone Let His Hair Down on ‘Cheers’

Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: April 29, 1993

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Cheers, “It’s Lonely on the Top” (Season 11, Episode 22) [Watch on Netflix.]

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: The final season of Cheers was a momentous occasion, leading up to a finale that everybody knew was going to be a television event. To the show’s credit, Cheers never went off the rails like certain other great sitcoms of its era (Roseanne; Seinfeld) did, and while it may not have reached the heights of its best seasons, the show went out on a really good note.

“It’s Lonely on the Top” was the fourth-last episode of the series, and the writers decided to have a good bit of fun with these characters we’d come to know so well. After Carla gets promoted to bartender, she sends all of Cheers on the bender to end all benders with one of her homemade concoctions (“I call it ‘I Know My Redeemer Liveth'”). The next morning, our hungover regulars reconvene to assess the damage. Woody heaved til he saw the angels. Frasier thinks he might just have a drinking problem. Phil confessed his secret involvement with the Manhattan Project. Cliff and Norm got mismatched tattoos on their butts. And then Carla shows up, looking like Carmen Sandiego.

Carla confesses her terrible secret to Sam: she slept with a Cheers regular, but she can’t remember who. After some quiet sleuthing, Carla appears to have ruled everyone out … until Paul shows up.

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Sam manages to convince Paul to keep his amorous conquest to himself (Paul’s private celebration to Sammy is a grotesque sight to behold), but Carla still has to live with the knowledge that she got drunk enough to sleep with Paul. She inconsolable in her shame … until Sam lets her in on his own shame: he’s been wearing a hairpiece to cover a rather sizeable bald spot.

Anybody who’d been following celebrity culture at all in the early ’90s knew that Ted Danson in real life was a good deal thinner up top than his onscreen presence. But to see that reality acknowledged on Cheers, and in such a funny and heartwarming way, was emblematic of a TV show that was ending with its place in the TV firmament secure.